Journal of International Criminal Justice Advance Access originally published online on November 25, 2005
Journal of International Criminal Justice 2006 4(2):202-218; doi:10.1093/jicj/mqi086
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The Enforcement of Arrest Warrants by International Forces
From the ICTY to the ICC
* LL B (Montréal), LL M (Harvard). I wish to thank Professor Richard J. Goldstone who agreed to supervise this essay. I am also grateful to Professor Philip B. Heymann, Natasha Kim, Keyvan Rastegar and Professor Marie-Ève Sylvestre for their review and comments on previous drafts.
[hzhou{at}post.harvard.edu]
The conflict in the former Yugoslavia set a precedent in modern history for having a multinational military force being empowered and directed to execute arrest warrants issued by an international criminal tribunal. On legal grounds, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) attained this result by relying on the broad wording of its governing Statute coupled with the ICTY's own rule-making powers. In contrast, the drafters of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Statute elaborated on the nature of the cooperation from international forces in significantly more details but at the same time opted for reducing the ICC's powers vis-à-vis these forces. Therefore, the ICC Statute now runs contrary to the ICTY's case law recognizing a judicial power to order an international force to execute an ICTY arrest warrant. This deferential stance towards collective enterprises of states not only infringes upon the States Parties’ general obligation to cooperate with the ICC, but, in the end, weakens the ICC's ability to enforce international criminal justice.